Stopgap Three-Week Spending Bill Passes Out Of The Senate

The Senate voted 81-18 to reopen the government, sending a bill that would fund the government through Feb. 8 to the House for final passage before it makes it to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

The vote was a foregone conclusion after the legislation made it easily through a 60-vote-threshold procedural vote in the Senate earlier Monday afternoon. There was a slight delay in the final passage vote as a technical issue — having to do with backpay for the furloughed workers during the three-day shutdown — was addressed.

Democrats and a handful of Republicans filibustered a bill early Saturday morning that would have kept the government opened for four weeks, citing frustrations that a solution had not been worked out to address the 700,000 young undocumented immigrants whose fate is in jeopardy after Trump terminated of the DACA program, among other issues.

Democrats folded on the shutdown after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that there would be a vote on the DACA issue on the Senate floor using a “neutral” process, if there is not a broader deal with the House and the White House on immigration by Feb. 8. More than a dozen Democrats, however, refused to support the deal.

The three-week spending legislation the Senate passed Monday, like the four-week bill that previously failed, reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years, after Republicans allowed it to lapse months ago. It also delayed a handful of taxes related to the Affordable Care Act.